London has the most starred restaurants in the smallest area. Iain
Hollingshead tried all of them in a day...

"One cannot trust people whose cuisine is so bad," Jacques Chirac was overheard joking to Vladimir Putin and Gerhard Schröder at a summit in 2005. "After Finland, Britain is the country with the worst food in the world." Fortunately those bad old days, like President Chirac, are long gone. Britain may still be the spiritual home of pot noodles, the Cornish pasty and spotted dick, but in London, at least, we have a gastronomic capital to rival anything a cheese-eating-surrender-monkey can throw at us in a food fight.

Indeed, after Millionaire Mile, in Hampstead, and Murder Mile, in Hackney, London can boast Michelin Mile: a stretch of road (well, two roads) from Marble Arch down to Hyde Park Corner and west along Knightsbridge that, since January, has contained five restaurants with a total of eight Michelin stars between them. No other city in the world has so many stars in such a small area.

As a Londoner, surely it would be wrong not to take advantage? Some people attempt to scale the highest three peaks in England, Scotland and Wales within 24 hours. Others drink their way around the Mumbles coast. I would set myself the arduous gastronomic equivalent – eating in five Michelin-starred restaurants in a day.

My gouty version of Super Size Me starts at 12.30pm, at Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester. A friend, Charlie, is waiting hungrily in the lobby. As an actor he is often free during the day, and in need of a good meal. I thought it would be nice for him to be in a restaurant without having to wear an apron.

The waiters welcome us with champagne and tiny spinach parcels, mollycoddling us as if we were intensive-care patients for whom anything but the best service risks tipping us into an irreversible coma. The guy with the bread basket even manages to mask his disgust when Charlie dives in with his fingers, denying him the chance to deploy his well-practised tongs.

Our bouches suitably amused, I start with egg, crayfish and green asparagus. Charlie, who grew up in France, inevitably plumps for the snails. I'm not much of a food critic – I don't know what I like and often don't like what I know – but I'm beginning to understand why Ducasse has 19 Michelin stars, three of them here at the Dorchester. The snails I steal from Charlie are so good it feels like they're making love to my tongue.

The main course is even better – seared sea scallops for me; roasted lobster for Charlie (partly, I think, because the lobster is £10 more expensive than anything else on the menu). Both are accompanied by a vegetable "cookpot", Ducasse's signature dish, which comes with its own glossy pamphlet, like a parliamentary candidate. Far be it for someone whose signature dish is pasta and pesto (red during the week, green at weekends) to criticise the world's greatest chef, but I don't find the "symbolic – almost philosophical – expression of my cooking" quite as exciting as the pamphlet-writer.

No matter. When you get tired of one restaurant on Michelin Mile, you can just roll out of the door into the next. Windows, on the 28th floor of the Park Lane Hilton, used to be as famous for its escorts as for its panoramic views. Now, though, its chef patron is Chris Galvin and it was awarded its first Michelin star in January. We have a pre-pudding of lime ice and coconut foam which is so good that Charlie starts re-enacting the restaurant scene from When Harry Met Sally. But this is mere foreplay for the hot soufflé of banana, chocolate and caramelised peanut that wobbles, alluringly, like Billy Piper.

After all this indulgence, it is a shock to step back into the real world. Fortunately, I only have to endure its blank indifference for four hours before meeting Diana, my girlfriend, at 7pm in Nobu, the first Asian restaurant to receive, in 1998, a Michelin star. We have a selection of delicious sashimi, washing it down with sake to counter-balance any positive effects all this fish might be having on my brain.

A hundred wobbly yards down the road, at the Lanesborough on Hyde Park Corner, is the newest kid on the block: Apsleys, the creation of Heinz Beck, a German chef who has three stars to his name in Rome and has just added one in London.

I am beyond making any decisions at this stage, so am grateful to the waiters for making them all. Plate after plate of almost unbearably delicious food arrives, each accompanied by a glass of wine: lobster; langoustine carpaccio with wild Oscietra caviar (a snip at £70); foie gras terrine with lentils and balsamic ice cream (bold, but brilliant); rabbit ravioli and pistachio; lamb; roasted pigeon (perfect).

We both feel like we're pregnant with the chef's baby. Still, one can always make room for another pudding. It is testament to Marcus Wareing, who has two stars at the Berkeley, that even after 8,000 calories, his Granny Smith apple crème, spiced brioche, popcorn and salted caramel is the best thing I've eaten on Michelin Mile.

I know I'll regret this the next day – and possibly the day after that. I feel like the Michelin Man in more ways than one. If I come to the Mile again – perhaps next month when Daniel Boulud, with three stars to his name, opens at the Mandarin Oriental, or next year, when Heston Blumenthal launches his first London restaurant in the same hotel – I might limit myself to one venue, especially if I'm paying.

But as we sit in the luxurious surroundings of the Berkeley, surrounded by trolleys of chocolate, of cheese, of brandy, of flowers – slightly off our own trolleys – and eavesdropping on an American next to us wearing a diamond ring the size of my flat, one can't help but think that the way the other 0.000001 per cent live must be very fun indeed.